


Second Night

by sconesandtextingandmurder



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Adoption, Alternative Universe - Domestic, Baby, Domestic, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Human Castiel, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-29
Updated: 2014-03-29
Packaged: 2018-01-17 11:08:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1385392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sconesandtextingandmurder/pseuds/sconesandtextingandmurder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s only in the middle of the night that Dean’s panicked and overwhelmed.  During the day, she’s five-and-a-half pounds of pure magic and Dean can’t get enough of her tiny perfection.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Second Night

Dean pulls the pillow over his face. “Are you kidding me? Again?”  He feels the bed shift as Cas tosses back the covers and sits up, the cries of the baby filling the night.  Dean scrunches the pillow away from one eye to look at the clock. “It’s only 2 AM and she’s already been up three times.”  They’ve fed her, changed her, and burped her.  They’ve followed the hospital instructions, making sure to fold the top of the diaper away from her umbilical cord and tucking her arms gently to her sides before swaddling her.  Each time she stays quiet just long enough for them to fall back asleep before waking them up with a fresh set of wails like some tiny, sadistic prison guard.

 

Dean drags himself out of bed to follow Cas down the hall towards the nursery.  “We have no idea what we’re doing,” he mutters.  “We rushed into this whole thing.”  Cas stops so suddenly that Dean, who’s been blindly drifting along in his wake, stumbles into him, grabs his arm to steady himself.  Cas turns to face him.

 

“We spent eighteen months on the adoption agency’s wait list and another six months once we were matched with Ellie’s birth mother. There is no definition of ‘rushed’ that applies here.”  The baby has quieted and Dean wraps both arms around Cas’s waist and buries his head in his shoulder. 

 

He yawns loudly thinking back to times he'd stayed awake for days, functioning and alert on hunts.  Sure, civilian life has made him soft, but there’s no reason he should be this tired. It’s not just the interrupted sleep, he knows, but the dizzying responsibility of this baby that has him crushed with a fatigue that buzzes in his head, leaving him desperate and defeated. “What if it’s always going to be like this?”

 

Cas hugs him, rubbing small reassuring circles between his shoulders.  “It’s only her second night with us.  I think it would be premature to extrapolate from this.”

 

Dean snorts. “Premature extrapolation.” He cracks up at his own joke, a punch drunk hysteria starting to bubble up that’s cut short when the baby begins to cry again.  

 

In the nursery, Cas scoops her up and she quiets instantly. 

 

“It’s like she hates us already.” Dean says, his hands loose at his sides.  “It’s bad enough that she has two dads, but she’s gonna grow up and decide _you’re_ a weirdo,” Cas, like the weirdo he is, doesn’t even react, “and she’ll think _I’m_ uncool—which I’m totally not--and it’s like she can already tell we’re going to ruin her life.”  He pauses, looks around the nursery.  “Do you think she can smell the fear on us?” 

 

“It appears lack of sleep has made you semi-incoherent and overly dramatic.“  Cas is bouncing the baby gently, his voice a quiet rumble.  “Perhaps you should go back to bed and I’ll attempt to soothe her.”

 

And Dean’s tempted, God is he tempted. But he looks at his little family, sees Cas holding Ellie up on his shoulder with his head tipped slightly as if he can divine what she wants from them by listening closely enough.  He realizes Cas is using two fingertips to rub little reassuring circles between her shoulders and Dean’s chest tightens with a combination of love, pride, and fear that threatens to overwhelm him.

 

“No way.”  He takes a step towards them, closes his hand around one tiny pajama-ed foot. “We’re in this together.” Cas gives him a small, relieved smile. Maybe if Dean could get a grip, control these rambling stream-of-consciousness nocturnal monologues, he’d remember that Cas is as adrift as he is. 

 

It’s only in the middle of the night that Dean’s panicked and overwhelmed.  During the day, she’s five-and-a-half pounds of pure magic and Dean can’t get enough of her tiny perfection.  He holds her and marvels at her tiny perfect lashes curling onto tiny perfect cheeks and her tiny perfect fingers each with a tiny perfect pink nail.  When she’s awake she regards them with solemn gunmetal grey eyes, a stare so intense that it unnerves Cas.   This afternoon Dean had followed him around the house holding the staring baby out at arm’s length inches from Cas’s face, saying “Hello, Castiel” in a squeaky voice every time he turned around.

 

“See? Creepy, right?” he’d crowed triumphantly, pulling the baby back into his chest when Cas huffed an exasperated _Dean_ at him. 

 

Here in the nursery, Dean positions himself behind Cas to look over his shoulder.  The baby’s wide awake and it’s probably just the dim light of the darkened room tricking Dean into thinking her eyes flash black. _It would explain a lot_ , he thinks for a guilty moment before his gaze flickers to the wards and sigils on the nursery door that are backups to the ones at the top of the stairs that are backups to the ones around the perimeter of the house as a whole.  Cas had called Dean overprotective, but when he’d gone to surreptitiously carve a few more into the underside of the crib rail, he found Cas had already beaten him to it. Ellie looks at Dean and starts to cry again.  “She hates me,” he says matter-of-factly.

 

 Cas lays her back down in the crib, unwraps the receiving blanket to unsnap the legs of the pale yellow sleeper sprigged with bumblebees. “Her diaper’s dry,” he confirms as he deftly snaps her back up with just the illumination of the nightlight projecting stars and planets on the ceiling to guide him.  Dean tries to ignore the fact that it takes him at least two tries to match the snaps correctly in the light of day. 

 

“Are you sure you’re wrapping her up right?”

 

“Jesus was ‘a babe in swaddling clothes’,” he says evenly.  “Who do you think did that?”

 

Dean gapes at him, eyes wide and mouth open. “That was you?”

 

Cas gives him an almost pitying look. “I’m beginning to think you’ll believe anything I tell you in the middle of the night.”

 

Dean’s jaw snaps shut and he holds up a warning finger. “Nobody likes a smarta—“ he glances down at the crib, “--alec angel.”

 

“My wedding ring tells a different story.” Cas is smiling at him now, fluttering his left hand so that the band of gold glimmers in the faint light.

 

As Dean searches his sleep-deprived brain for an appropriate comeback, they realize the room has gone quiet and look down to see the baby asleep, sucking on one tiny fist.

 

“She wants her hands out,” says Dean at the same time Cas says, “She doesn’t like her arms tucked in.”  Cas swaddles her again, keeping her arms free. He lifts his hands from her slowly and cautiously, as if she’s a wee bomb that might go off with sudden movement. They wait, still as statues, as Ellie makes a small contented sound and stays asleep.

 

“Look how smart she is,” breathes Dean as he reaches for Cas’s hand.  “Dude, we are _awesome_ at this.” He stands and watches their daughter— _their daughter—_ sleep until Cas tugs his hand to lead him back to bed.

 

 

 


End file.
